Tom Courtenay

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Sir Thomas Daniel Courtenay (born 25 February 1937) is an English actor who came to prominence in the early 1960s with a succession of films, including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Billy Liar (1963), and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Since the mid-1960s, he has been known primarily for his work in the theatre, although he received Academy Award nominations for Doctor Zhivago and the film adaptation of The Dresser (1983), which he had performed in the West End and on Broadway.

He was created a Knight Bachelor in February 2001 for his services to cinema and theatre.

Early life

Courtenay was born on 25 February 1937 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Annie Eliza (née Quest) and Thomas Henry Courtenay, a boat painter in Hull fish docks. He attended Kingston High School and went on to study English at University College London, where he failed his degree. After this he studied drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.

Personal life

Courtenay married actress Cheryl Kennedy in 1973. They divorced in 1982. In 1988, he married Isabel Crossley, a stage manager at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. They have homes in Manchester and Putney in London.

In 2000, Courtenay's memoir Dear Tom: Letters From Home was published to critical acclaim. It comprises a selection of the letters exchanged between Courtenay and his mother, interspersed with his own recollections of life as a young student actor in London in the early 1960s.

Courtenay is the President of Hull City AFC's Official Supporters' Club.

In 1999, Courtenay was awarded an honorary doctorate by Hull University.

In 2018, he was bestowed the Honorary Freedom of the City of Hull.

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Career

Courtenay made his stage debut with the Old Vic theatre company in Edinburgh in 1960 before being replaced by Albert Finney in the title role of Billy Liar at the Cambridge Theatre in 1961. He appeared in the film version directed by John Schlesinger in 1963 and 1963. "We both have the same problem, including overcoming the North's blazing speech," Albert Finney said.

Private Potter, directed by Finnish-born director Caspar Wrede, was the first film to appear in Courtenay in 1962, when he first saw it in RADA. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, directed by Tony Richardson and Billy Liar, was the first in a series of British New Wave films and performances that helped usher in the British New Wave of the early to mid-1960s. The 1962 BAFTA Award for most promising newcomer and the 1963 BAFTA Award for best actor respectively were given to Courtenay for these appearances. He was also the first to record Mrs. Brown's You've Got a Lovely Daughter, which was also applicable to The Lads' TV play. The song was released on a 45rpm record by Decca.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Doctor Zhivago (1965), but was disqualified by Martin Balsam. King & Country, directed by Joseph Losey; Operation Crossbow, directed by Michael Anderson; and The Night of the Generals, directed by Anatole Litvak and costarring George Peppard and George Segal; and Operation Crossbow, directed by George Peppard and George Segal; In the ultimately chilling anti-nuke black comedy "The Day The Fish Came Out" in 1967, he provided physical slapstick comedy. He appeared in two spy films, Otley (1966) and "Catch Me A Spy" (1970) starring Kirk Douglas, and later in 1968, he co-starred in a serious film of that genre opposite Laurence Harvey, who appeared in two spy films, 1969 to 1971.

Despite being boosted by the aforementioned films, Courtenay has claimed that he does not like film acting; from the mid-1960s, he primarily concentrated on stage performances, but in a later Telegraph interview on 4/20/2005, he confessed to "I barely overdid the anti-film thing." When Courtenay was a student at Manchester University in 1968, he began a long association with the city. Courtenay performed Hamlet (John Nettles playing Laertes) for 69 Theatre Company in Manchester in 1969, the precursor of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, where he appeared often under Casper Wrede's direction. In Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals and the Prince of Homburg, Faulkland, were his first roles on the Royal Exchange. Since then, he has appeared in a variety of roles, including in 1999 and 2001 Uncle Vanya, which included the leading role in the theatre's production of King Lear.

Courtenay's career with Wrede began when he appeared in the latter's 1970 film One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In The Dresser, Ronald Harwood's play of the same name (in which he also appeared) with Albert Finney, his first known film role since then was in The Dresser, his first film role since then. Both Courtenay and Finney were nominated for Best Actor in the 1983 Academy Awards for their respective performances, losing to Robert Duvall. In the 1991 film Let Him Have It, he played the father of Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston). And for an actor who is traditionally cast in good or well-known films, he co-starred in what has been described as one of the worst films ever, Bill Cosby's infamous Leonard Part 6 starring Bill Cosby.

Courtenay's television and radio appearances have been limited, but they have included She Stoops to Conquer on BBC and several Ayckbourn plays. On television, he appeared in I Heard the Owl Call My Name. In 1994, he starred in a'made for television' version of The Old Curiosity Shop, opposite Peter Ustinov. In the 1995 US TV film Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye, he appeared in many unexpected ways as the anthropologist Bronisaw Malinowski. He appeared alongside Albert Finney for the acclaimed BBC drama A Rather English Marriage in 1998. In Ben Steiner's radio play "A Brief Interruption," broadcast on BBC Radio 4, he played God, opposite Sebastian Graham-Jones. Stanley Laurel was a player in Neil Brand's radio play 'Stan', which was broadcast on Radio 4. He appeared in Nick Leather's The Domino Man of Lancashire and Maurice in Richard Lumsden's Man in the Moon, a classic, also on Radio 4. Courtenay appeared on the BBC show The Royle Family's 2008 Christmas special, as Dave Sr., Dave Sr.'s father.

Courtenay produced Pretending To Be Me, based on poet Philip Larkin's letters and writings, which premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 2002. It was later transferred to the Comedy Theatre in London's West End.

Courtenay appeared in two films in 2007: Flooding, a disaster epic in which London is flooded with floods, and The Golden Compass, a Farder Coram adaptation. He appeared in the BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens in 2008, as William Dorrit, and the Christmas edition of The Royle Family, playing David (Senior). He appeared in Gambit, a film starring fellow RADA alumnus Alan Rickman that began filming in May. In November 2012, the film was released in the United Kingdom. In 2012, he co-starred in Quartet, directed by Dustin Hoffman.

In the highly praised Andrew Haigh film "45 Years" in 2015, he co-starred Charlotte Rampling. Courtenay received international recognition for his role as Geoff Mercer, and the film was highly acclaimed and well-received both internationally and in the United States.

He was a member of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and King of Thieves in 2018.

He appeared on Harry Hill's Alien Fun Capsule, episode 1, panelist. After the other three guests' announcement that the fourth seat (Courtenay's) was empty, Harry expressed surprise at his inauguration. Harry said he knew the guest had started some time ago, which was followed by a cut to the 1962 film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which was also based on Courtenay's character. The courtenays then entered the studio, evidently out of breath and wearing the same running kit he'd been wearing in the film.

In addition, he appeared in The Queen's Corgi, his first voice role, and in The Aeronauts starring Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne, and in 2019 he portrayed Prince Philip in The Queen's Corgi.

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